Grace Hwang

Breaking Away from Our Waves

Class of: 2023

Major: Illustration BFA

Medium: Colored construction paper sculpture

Faculty: Alaiyo Bradshaw

Prompt: The prompt of this project is In this final project, we, the class, can create any concept that reflects our response to the concept that we choose; it can be either positive or negative. We also can depict our response with any mediums of our choice.

I decided to do a more of a wanting response to my concept which is “Freedom”. I choose to do a concept about freedom because of the situation we are in right now where we can’t leave our homes. Ever since the pandemic broke out, all I kept thinking is freedom and wanting to be outside of my house. But since we can’t leave our house, I decided why not create a piece that creates a sense of that freedom because doing art already makes me feel free. From that decision, I decided to depict two koi fishes, jumping freely out from the water where they live. I choose them as the subject for my piece because I usually depict fishes as sea creatures swimming freely without a care in the world yet alerted in an abyss as new things come in their way every moment in their lives. I also was originally inspired by one of my sketches where the fishes are completely made out of the water and merging out of the water. Doing this project made me realize how you can create a sense of movement with a structure instead of drawing or animating the subject. It also taught me how you can create something originally intended to be animated or 2D to create it into 3D without losing the original concept and how your old ideas still can be used in other ways or in different concepts.